FOX won the night with a two hour installment of So You Think You Can Dance taking both most viewers and the best 18-49 year old age demographic performance. CBS was second in viewers but tied for third with ABC in the 18-49 demo. NBC which was third in total viewing came in second in the age demo with 3.0/9 with over 7 million people tuning into game six of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals. If you're not a hockey fan, skip directly to the numbers...

The Detroit Red Wings beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-2 to win the best of seven series four games to two. Seven million people though! Last year the finals averaged LESS THAN two million viewers per game and they had not averaged above five million since 2002.

I know I've said it several times but I'll say it again. Last June when TVbytheNumbers.com was just but a glimmer in our eyes, I wound up basically sending a chart similar to this one to Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Washington Capitals NHL franchise. I knew Ted back from my days writing a newsletter about the online/Internet world in the 1990s.

Ted and I wound up having an extremely spirited and engaging discussion about the ratings and it did nothing but fuel my interest in doing this web site. I learned a lot along the way. So it's very nice to see the ratings trend up this year versus the last several years. OK, sure, it didn't have as many viewers as So You Think You Can Dance, but last night's game had FIVE MILLION more viewers than the average for last year's finals (1.76mm). That's a nice tick up. And a 3.0 in the 18-49 demo!

Congratulations to the Detroit Red Wings who are Hockeytown USA by the only definition that really matters: where is the Stanley Cup? It's in Detroit as it has now been in like four out of the last twelve years. Some would call that a dynasty.

Nonetheless, I will be trying to dig up the local ratings, including the CBC ratings for the local Detroit market to see how Pittsburgh and Detroit viewing compared.